


Recitative

by Rose Emily (toomuchplor)



Series: Opera [2]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Drama, Humor, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-08-30
Updated: 2003-08-30
Packaged: 2017-11-01 09:09:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/354785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toomuchplor/pseuds/Rose%20Emily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to "Aria", but can be read as a stand-alone.  Lex and Clark discuss opera, but in a sexy way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recitative

_Giunse alfin il momento_  
 _che godro senz'affanno_  
 _in braccio all'idol mio. Timide cure_ , _uscite dal mio petto_ ,  
 _a turbar non venite il mio diletto!_  
 _Oh, come par che all'amoroso foco_  
 _l'amenita del loco_ ,  
 _la terra e il ciel risponda_ ,  
 _come la notte i furti miei seconda!_

The moment finally arrives  
Which I'll enjoy without haste  
In the arms of my beloved...  
Fearful anxieties, get out of my heart! Do not come to disturb my delight.  
Oh, it seems that earth, heaven and this place answer my heart's amorous fire.  
As the night responds to my ruses. 

\- Lorenzo da Ponte, from Mozart's _Le Nozze di Figaro_ (translation by Naomi Gurt Lind) 

* * *

"I think I like opera." 

Lex looked up, pleasantly surprised to find Clark standing in his office, hands stuck in his jeans pockets and looking generally delectable. 

"Is that so?" Lex purred, leaning back in his chair and mentally clearing his schedule for the rest of the afternoon. 

Clark's eyes were amazingly unchanged from the last time he had been in this office. He was still the picture of boyish sincerity, still seemingly oblivious to Lex's subtle radiation of sexuality. Yet last night, in the porsche, on the side of the road, Clark's eyes had seemed to see right into Lex, into places Lex hadn't known belonged to him. It was almost too much to believe that the hot, urgent creature of yesterday could be related to the blandly sweet teenager who was now over by the stereo. 

Turning the pages of the CD liner notes for the music Lex was playing, Clark commented, "What's a 'nosey'?" 

Lex found himself unable to reply, completely lost, until he remembered his young friend's ignorance of Italian pronunciation. "It's 'NOH-tsay'," he corrected. "It means 'marriage'. This opera's called 'The Marriage of Figaro'." 

Clark's eyes widened and his dark head nodded in comprehension. He looked up with a grin. "Hey, where's the part where they go, 'Fee-ga-ro, Fee-ga-ro, Fee-ga-ro!" For someone who had obviously used Looney Tunes as a role model, Clark had a surprisingly good tenor voice. Lex wondered if it would be a waste of time to mention the possibility of classical voice study. 

"That's from Rossini - 'The Barber of Seville'." 

"Oh right ... cause Bugs Bunny was shaving Elmer Fudd's head," Clark nodded, matching Lex's serious mood as if they were holding an academic discourse on the subject, not classifying classical music found in cartoons. "But, really, I like this. Maybe you were right about going to see Mozart next," he continued. "It doesn't seem as ..." 

"Sleep inducing?" supplied Lex, with cruel humor. Clark blushed but smiled slightly. 

"So when's this playing?" he asked, holding up the CD. "We should go." 

Lex frowned suspiciously at Clark. "You're serious?" 

"Totally," Clark answered, nodding eagerly. "It was fun, last night." The tips of Clark's ears were turning faintly pink in his keenness for Lex to believe him. 

Lex templed his hands and stared at Clark critically for a moment. "This could mean one of two things ..." he thought out loud. "One: your way of enjoying music is to inspect the leading lady's cleavage, then fall unconscious, then twitch impatiently, then leave shortly after intermission ... in which case, vive l'opera!" 

Clark opened his mouth to protest, but Lex spoke before he could get a word in. 

"Two: you think that if I agree to take you to the opera again, you and I will re-enact other portions of the night's events. Namely the making out in the car." 

Clark's mouth closed, and his face promptly turned the same color as the tips of his ears. 

Lex felt a twinge of pity - he had certainly never been at a loss for words when he was sixteen, but he could still imagine that it wasn't a comfortable situation. With that in mind, Lex stood up and walked around his desk towards Clark, stopping about a foot away from him. 

"Clark, what happened last night ..." Lex began, and Clark's chin dipped as he skipped his eyes towards the floor. Lex reached out two fingers and gently angled Clark's face up so that he met Lex's gaze. "It wasn't just because we went to the opera." 

Clark's eyes began to smile before his lips did - Lex had never noticed that before. 

"It was because of how I feel for you ... I didn't know you returned those feelings, but now I do. I hope ..." Lex bit his lip. This was the hard part, the part where he became vulnerable. "I hope you haven't changed your mind since then." 

Clark's answer was the spread of his smile to his lips, then a step forward, followed by a glancing, shy kiss. The touch of their lips caught, as if by some unseen magnetism, and Lex's mouth opened to admit Clark's tongue. Susanna began to sing on the recording, the expressive rubato of the recitative being translated into the varying motion of Lex's mouth on Clark's, of Clark's hand on Lex's back. 

"You know," murmured Lex, pulling away from Clark's ardent kisses. "In an opera, the recitative is where the action happens. The arias are for the expression of emotions, but the recitative ... they're the opera equivalent of car chase sequences in Schwarzenegger movies." 

Clark's green eyes were wandering over the curve of Lex's cheekbones, his lips. The young man's gaze was like a silvery heat - Lex could almost feel the path his hungry eyes traced. "That's really interesting," Clark replied, drawing closer, pressing his hips up against Lex. His lips descended on Lex's eyelids, forcing him to close his eyes. 

"Susanna's singing this, dressed up as her mistress, pretending to wait for the Count, her master, to come to her. She's talking about how long she's waited for this, how much she's looking forward to it ... but she knows her husband is watching, and she's really singing about him." Lex loved the ridiculous plot twists of the da Ponte libretti - they seemed to involve almost as much cross-dressing as Shakespearian comedies. 

"Wow," Clark enthused, but he was probably talking about the sensation of grinding his erection against its twin in Lex's pants. Lex couldn't help but react to this himself, exhaling heavily and twining his fingers in Clark's thick hair. 

"The opera's all about fidelity, and how true love, righteous love - oh God, Clark, do that again - isn't really about passion, or intrigue. Holy shit, I think I should get you upstairs right now," Lex gasped, as Clark's big hands neatly untucked Lex's shirt-tails and began to stroke the skin of his belly and lower back. 

"What else?" Clark rasped, his mouth settling on Lex's neck. 

"What else?" Lex repeated stupidly, rational thoughts having just been forcibly expelled by the sensation of Clark's hand sliding up his chest to his right nipple. 

Clark stopped, pulling back. "You said the opera's about righteous love, and it's not the same as passion," Clark reiterated. 

"How could you have been listening to that?" Lex marvelled, reappraising the kid's ability to focus under pressure. He must be a killer on standardized tests. 

"Well, you mean us, don't you?" Clark prompted. "You were talking about us, yesterday, at the opera. I thought you were trying to say something else now." 

"Oh," Lex answered. "Actually, I kind of have this habit of expostulating on random and arcane knowledge when I'm trying to concentrate on not coming in my pants." 

Clark, ever the innocent, even having just removed his hand from Lex's nipple, looked shocked by Lex's language. "So which are we?" he asked, fixing his straightforward gaze on Lex. 

"Which ...?" repeated Lex, his eyes straying over Clark's form. 

"Are we true love, righteous love, or are we passion and intrigue?" Clark clarified, his voice becoming lighter as the lust dropped away from his tone. "I mean, this is the car chase scene of our Schwarzenegger movie - I'd kind of like to know if we're in the car that crashes and blows up or if we're sitting in the one that speeds off into the sunset." 

Lex blinked several times. Were they really having this conversation already? Was this child presuming to have the "where is this relationship headed" talk before they'd even blown each other? "In Mozart," Lex began, hoping that sense would follow, "In Mozart, it's not so much destiny that determines which couple ends up which way." 

Clark raised an eyebrow and folded his arms over his chest, clearly waiting for the concluding statement of Lex's little "I shalt not come yet" soliloquy. 

"It's a choice they make," Lex went on, his softening cock freeing more blood for the use of his brain. "It's a conscious decision they make, to do what's right and good, rather than follow the dictates of their baser impulses." 

Eyebrow still raised. Green eyes still patiently waiting. Good point, was Lex's desire to unbuckle Clark's pants and suck him off more of a base impulse or a righteous choice? The answer seemed obvious. 

"I love you." The words were choked and fearful, but they managed to emerge from Lex's throat nonetheless. Clark's eyes were a sea that swallowed up those words without hesitation, without artifice. "I choose you because with you, I feel like I'm better. I'm more complete, more ..." 

"Righteous?" suggested Clark, and his tone was lower, more relaxed. His fingers were stroking Lex's shirtfront, his eyes shining with anticipation 

"Closer to truth," Lex agreed softly, weak with his lover's benevolence, with his understanding. Clark's arms went around Lex, enfolding him in warmth and security. 

"Now can you come upstairs with me?" Lex asked, as his lips grazed Clark's ear. 

"What are you going to do with me?" bantered Clark, hands roaming to Lex's ass. 

" _Ti vo' la fronte incoronar di rose_ ," answered Lex. 

"Speak. _English_ ," ordered Clark. "I never took Spanish in school yet." 

Lex laughed. "Italian. And I said, 'I want to crown your head with roses.' It's what Susanna's singing right now." 

Clark's eyes narrowed as he pulled back enough to survey Lex. "And by 'head' and 'roses' and 'crown', you mean what exactly?" 

"That's more of a bedroom scene, actually," Lex smiled, and taking his lover by the end, led him offstage. 


End file.
